Zyxel NSA 325 v2 - Debian install

I became the proud owner of the device mentioned in the subject, because my father attempted to dump it in the trash and I thought it might still be usefull for something. After some searching I got here on this forum and here I am, asking newby questions and hope that somebody might answer.

Here I stopped as I seen bad blocks, but then I realised that my bad blocks are in the "kernel_1" and "rootfs" part?
This is what I am not sure of and seek some guidance on. Please if you have anything to add as a useful information regarding this install, then feel free.

Yes, this is what I just realised yesterday evening, when I read trough again everything. That I had to do everything in one run. Especially, because at the moment I do not have other linux machine beside this NAS. So I can only do it with one reboot. So I started checking trough the commands which needs to create the rootfs and unfortunately the mkimage looks not available on my box:

> Yes, this is what I just realised yesterday
> evening, when I read trough again everything. That
> I had to do everything in one run. Especially,
> because at the moment I do not have other linux
> machine beside this NAS. So I can only do it with
> one reboot. So I started checking trough the
> commands which needs to create the rootfs and
> unfortunately the mkimage looks not available on
> my box:

You don't need to use mkimage while creating the Debian rootfs to run with the new u-boot. I think you've misread the instruction. It does not involve mkimage. Basically, you must skip Step 4.

However, If you ever need it , you can use the mkimage command on the rootfs. This is one of the reasons the rootfs should be create first. If the USB drive is mounted at /media/sdb1, then

/media/sdb1/usr/bin/mkimage

> Another thing which I not entirely understand,
> that the image we create on the USB but then we
> will install that on the NAS, or the HDD inside
> the NAS?

It make it easy to install on USB to get it running. The USB is your entire Debian Linux system. Then later if you want to use the HDD as the rootfs, then you can backup and restore the USB rootfs to the HDD.

If this is the only Linux box that you have, then you should install the rootfs on the HDD (instead of USB). You would need to wipe out the HDD with fdisk, create Ext3 partition, ... basically follow the same procedure, but using the HDD.

The drawback with HDD rootfs is if you made mistake during installation then it needs to be taken out to another Linux box to fix. For a USB thumb drive it is easier.

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